Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) is a major inflammatory mediator. Excessive levels of TNF are linked to many diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, heart valve disease and cancer. Our research is aimed at understanding how TNF expression is regulated, with the hope that we can use this knowledge to manipulate TNF expression for therapeutic purposes.

TNF plays many functions in immunity, inflammation, cell proliferation and cell death. For this reason, its role in cancer is ambiguous. Thus, we also investigate the influence of TNF-associated chronic inflammation on the development and the therapy of cancer.

The project will utilise in vitro and in vivo models, and a variety of cell and molecular biology techniques including CRISPR, tissue culture and protein chemistry.